CHAPTER 455: DIGNITY AND CHOICE (2/2)

After giving it some thought, Paliseth came to the decision that this was a workable solution. But because I was still here, she decided to seek my opinion as well. “Your holiness, what are your views on this matter?”

“Are you willing to go to war?” I asked Aishael, skipping over Paliseth’s question entirely.

Seeing as her mother had just passed away, I wanted to give this little girl some time to recover first.

Yet that was just my own opinion. Aishael, on the other hand, did not hesitate at all before rejecting my good will. She looked Lanbael right in the eyes, ice cold fury barely disguised. “We are not afraid of a challenge.”

Having done that, she turned to the Half-Elves beside her and exclaimed, “You hear that?! War has come! Even though this witch is just trying to use us as fodder, this is still a chance to prove ourselves with the blood of our enemies! If we fight, we fight for our dignity!”

“We fight for our dignity!” The Half-Elves present pumped their fists into the air as they chanted, every one of them burning with hot-blooded passion. Such was their passion that even I was beginning to feel a surge of blood in me as well.

In their eyes I could see Elves who had long put aside the notion of life and death. They were battle-hardened warriors, wrought from the corpses of their enemies, and thirsty for another battle.

Faced with such a rousing scene, Lanbael frowned. This wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for, and neither was this a reaction she understood. But all that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they now had an army to send to war. In war, some of these Half-Elves were bound to die, and if lady luck favored her, this despicable Aishael would be amongst the dead.

Just like that, I had gained further insight into the relationship between Aishael and the Half-Elves… for dignity huh…

There was no doubt now that there were two factions amongst the Half-Elves. One, the Half-Elves who guarded the elevator and would immediately prostrate themselves before Lanbael -the faction that most would consider spineless. Then there was Aishael and her Half-Elves. They did not kneel before Lanbael and even tried to argue with her -the faction who claimed to be fighting for their dignity.

Broadly speaking, these two factions were the Peaceful Faction and the Hawkish Faction.

The leader of the Hawkish Faction was clearly Aishael. She was a natural choice for this position given that she was a powerful Magister, and more importantly, she was of Paliseth’s bloodline. Even if Paliseth did not care about her before, there was no doubt that if anyone could change their current awkward situation, it would be her.

While that might have sounded like an arbitrary reason to elect someone as leader, the world was just that: arbitrary. Whether on Earth or in a fantasy world, some people were just born with a better start than others. This was a plain and simple fact, not something you could wash away because it offended your notion of fairness. What could be changed however, was how one faced such an arbitrary world.

The choice was what was important. And it was this choice that defined the Half-Elves before me today. Rather than just simply existing, they chose to live with dignity.

Aishael knew she had to put on a strong front now. If she were to act like the Peaceful Faction in front of Lanbael, how would she lead her people then? This was a road of thorns she was travelling, but one she had to take as their leader.

Their current situation was such that they were no better than slaves. They had to take part in pointless wars, and were basically no better than dogs to the Dark Elves. Perhaps by bending the knee like the Peaceful Faction members, they might have been spared some of the mistreatment, but that was a tiring way to live.

To the Half-Elves screaming for dignity today, those Half-Elves were a disgrace to their race. They would rather die standing than live kneeling. But were those Half-Elves really so wrong for submitting to Lanbael? Yes, and no. After all, who didn’t want to live a better life for themselves?